So for months my 16-year-old daughter has urged me to get on Facebook, insisting that I remain “plugged in” despite my advancing years. So I set up a Facebook account with a weird made-up name and a quite hilarious headshot, if I do say so myself, of one of my favourite fictional characters. My son, daughter and American nephew invited me to be their friends. I have only three.

So my daughter is away for most of the month with my beloved in-laws, and told me if I need to get a message to her, just post it on her Facebook wall because she goes online once a day. I thought this was odd. I mean why not just e-mail? But I did as she said.So one day I post a message to her wall and I see that all of her girlfriends, lovely girls that I have known since they were all in junior kindergarten together, have also posted her messages to tell her how much they miss her and …. oh yeah …. to divulge in great detail the fact that all four of them are raging potheads. Oh yes. All sorts of posts about how high they all got the night before and how they almost got arrested and “I’m so stoned right now I can barely type but getting high without you is not the same!” and so on and so on and so on.

What would you do if you found out your daughter was a pothead? Or even a variant shade thereof? I know what i would do, and I’ve had to do it to various parents over the years.

Most parents are saddened, shocked, indignant (my kid would never! type of indignancy). But every one in a while, we get a few who shrug their shoulders, and say “what’s the big deal?”.

It seems that all kids are resigned to experimenting with drugs and alcohol, at least in Jacy’s eyes. And in the eyes of many of her adherents, judging by the response, and JonoVision’s developing pariah-hood.

In the comments, he is called unenlightened (it’s not 1958 anymore) and an antiquated thinker (egads, no… say it ain’t so!).

Jacy’s response?

I am a pretty cool mother and I know this is what kids do — I did it at their age, and quite honestly, marijuana-smoking does not freak me out nearly as much as heavy boozing. They are good, close friends, look out for one another, hang out mostly exclusively with one another, they all do well in school, they all treat their parents (for the most part) with respect, they are not lazy, not stunned, they obey their curfews, they are basically very good kids.

Great; cool mothers let their kids engage in illegal, mood altering behaviours. Better to regulate these behavious than to drive them underground.

I would classify these enabling behaviours, on the part of parents, as illegal and akin to child abuse. I know there are many many good parents out there, who know how to talk with their kids, and talk frankly about issues like sex and drugs.

JonoVision is one of those parents. I know his kids, and I personally know of their close and caring relationship. And I sure as shit know that it is not normal for kids to experiment with pot.

Parents like Jacy make me sick, quite frankly. They are a bigger hinderance to public education than one might imagine. Certainly, they make my job much harder to do.

Sometimes… “making a difference” is hard to accept. I’m much more an immediate gratification kinda guy, which makes it hard for me to be a teacher sometimes. Then again, I keep on running into former students, and that’s really nice.